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Why Law Firms should stop and think about Social Media

The Real Lawyers have Blogs have published an interesting post on the use of Social Media by Law Firms. In Law firms best not to get ahead of themselves on social media they ask whether it's better to learn how to do the basics well, rather then try to do lots of things badly.

From the blog post "Before just using every form of social media as a law firm, why not just master the basics? Rather than use a whole lot stuff badly and embarrass yourself unknowingly in the process, why not use something well?

Blogging is as basic as it gets in social media. And there's not a better way for a lawyer to demonstrate their expertise, establish themselves as thought leader, and get work the old fashioned tasteful way - by word of mouth.

To start a few blogs, do them poorly, and have lawyers struggling to continue to publish to the blogs while starting off on Twitter and Facebook is the height of folly. You've identified the most effective tool offering the highest ROI, a blog. Rather than learning how to use the tool wisely, you do a crummy job, leave the lawyers hanging, experience no success (other than saying we have blogs), and move on to the next great thing. Lunacy."

This seems like a very sensible approach to Social Media for law firms, but is this what happens in reality? Social Media applications are certainly very exciting to use and I think this is part of the problem. People get carried away with the potential benefits associated with using these tools and don't look at the consequences of rolling several out at the same time. A better approach would be as suggested in the blog post, to start small and basic and once the skills associated with this tool have been mastered move on.

Full post as published by LI Issues on December 21, 2009 (boomark / email).